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Draining California

nationalgeographic.com

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Re: Draining California

#41

Post by markvdb »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #40
snomad wrote: post #34

Many people will often say agricultural uses 80% of the water. This is not the whole picture. "Nature provides about 200 million acre-feet of precipitation to California in average years. Of this total, 65% is lost through evaporation and transpiration by trees and other plants. The remaining 35% stays in the state’s system as runoff. More than 30% of this runoff flows out to the Pacific Ocean or other salt sinks. Th…

What does evaporation have to do with anything? When people are talking about the drought and competition of water, they are talking about the net water available, not what is lost through natural processes.

Man has created big surfaces of water in hot dry areas. A significant portion evaporates before it can be used...

Re: Draining California

#43

Post by refurb »

hughdbrown wrote: post #36
ghshephard wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Farms stop being economical north of $2000 per acre foot. ( http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-24/california-water-pr... ). There are 326,000 gallons in an acre-foot. So, Most Farms can't pay much more than 2000/326000, = $0.006/Gallon. $0.75/cubic meter = .75 / 264 = $0.002/Gallon. It's within range - but, once again, it's not the cost of generation, but the cost of distribution that gets expensive. The Sier…

Barrels, gallons, acre-inches, acre-feet. This is why I find the metric system so much preferable: only liters and cubic meters (1000 liters).

Really? I find acre-inches pretty intuitive. Maybe convert to hectare-centimeters?

Re: Draining California

#44

Post by NDizzle »

harywilke wrote: post #42

saw these photos. looks dreadful. http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2014/09/dramatic-photos-o...

I am picking up a quad copter tomorrow. I plan to go to Oroville and get some footage from the lake area as soon as I'm comfortable with it.

Re: Draining California

#45

Post by snowwindwaves »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #32

We live in Ottawa, Canada. Last year we had a very dry summer, so the city sent out notices asking people to please water their lawns regularly. The Ottawa River is a major river, Ottawa is the only major user of its water, and doesn't really make a dent in the flow, especially since we put our wastewater back into the Ottawa (after treatment, mostly). They had no concern about water security, but they did have a con…

I lived in Ottawa in the 90's and they definitely had restrictions on when you could water your lawn then.

Maybe it was a water delivery limit as opposed to a water source limit.

Although i do remember the river would get so low you could walk quite far out to the middle and Champlain rapids were more like a shallow stream

Re: Draining California

#46

Post by gregwebs »

What a great visualization!

It is sad though to click on the other tab "When Snows Fall" and see the central valley referred to as an "inhabited desert". We continually try to give the impression that we turned the Central Valley from desert into farmland, when the opposite is the case: we turned what was a winter wetlands into a desert.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Valley_Grasslands_State_P...

Re: Draining California

#47

Post by ghshephard »

hughdbrown wrote: post #36
ghshephard wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Farms stop being economical north of $2000 per acre foot. ( http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-24/california-water-pr... ). There are 326,000 gallons in an acre-foot. So, Most Farms can't pay much more than 2000/326000, = $0.006/Gallon. $0.75/cubic meter = .75 / 264 = $0.002/Gallon. It's within range - but, once again, it's not the cost of generation, but the cost of distribution that gets expensive. The Sier…

Barrels, gallons, acre-inches, acre-feet. This is why I find the metric system so much preferable: only liters and cubic meters (1000 liters).

If you have an acre of farmland, an acre-foot of water is the most relevant way of measuring required water.

Re: Draining California

#48

Post by Gracana »

vacri wrote: post #27
jwr wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On every visit to the US (I'm from Europe), I find it amazing how much water gets wasted. Monster-flush toilets, vertical-axis washing machines, and the most egregious offender: hotel shower. The first time I saw those, it took a while before I realized you just can't limit the flow of water, by design.

In my travel across the US, I noticed exactly one washing line - put up in a hostel room by a Swede (no doubt they're not quite that rare, but I didn't see them). When summer comes along and the electric grid starts to fail, I hear a lot of Americans talking about the burden of airconditioning, but it's very rare that they talk about tumble-dryers, which gobble a hell of a lot of power.

Most people hang their laundry somewhere in their back yards, not the front.

Re: Draining California

#49

Post by ericabiz »

vacri wrote: post #26
ghshephard wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long, Long before there was any shortage of drinking water, the various water authorities would simply increase the prices of water to levels which reduce residential usage. The problem in California isn't lack of water for individual use (for the most part, there are a few small communities that are having to truck in water), it's the impact on Agriculture, which is hugely important to the economy of California, and…

In 2011, the average californian used about 326 gallons/day of water. I am gobsmacked - this is a phenomenal amount of water. This is an order of magnitude more than we use here in Melbourne. 326 gallons = 1230 litres, whereas we use ~ 230 litres per person on average. I'm genuinely puzzled by how you use so much water every day. Previously at the end of a 10-year drought and very low reserves, the government target…

Not just in Melbourne, but even here in the US that's a lot!

I just pulled up my monthly bill to confirm--my current bill reflects 33 days of service, and is for 3900 gallons. I live in Austin, TX in a single-family home that typically has 3-4 adults in it (me, my roommate, and an Airbnb that's booked out almost every day with 1-2 additional adults.) That 3900 gallon usage, or 118 gal/day, is for all of us combined. So it's quite doable in the US!

I think the biggest contributing factors are:

1) We don't water the lawn. Ever.

2) I've installed all extremely energy-efficient appliances, including new toilets, a washer and a dishwasher that use very little energy.

3) We don't take baths--only showers.

I never feel like I'm scrimping when it comes to water. In fact, if anything, I think we do way more laundry/dishes than the typical household thanks to having an Airbnb and wanting to keep everything clean for our guests.

My conclusion: Americans are going to have to give up on their green lawns, and prioritize energy efficiency in appliances, to get to this level. But it's really doable here in the US.

Re: Draining California

#50

Post by baq »

snomad wrote: post #34

Many people will often say agricultural uses 80% of the water. This is not the whole picture. "Nature provides about 200 million acre-feet of precipitation to California in average years. Of this total, 65% is lost through evaporation and transpiration by trees and other plants. The remaining 35% stays in the state’s system as runoff. More than 30% of this runoff flows out to the Pacific Ocean or other salt sinks. Th…

what kind of environmental consequences would preventing evaporation bring?
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